Various types of imaging systems are available for imaging the surface and/or the interior of such diverse entities such as, for example, the human anatomy, animals, man-made physical structures such as welding joints in bridges, geological formations, bodies of water, as well as many others. For example, in the field of medical imaging, various types of sensors exist which are used for acquiring image data of various anatomical portions of the human body.
The image quality produced by an imaging system may degrade over time as various sensor parameter settings of the imaging system are changed by operators or technicians, or as a sensor subsystem of the imaging system degrades over time. For example, an X-ray tube of an X-ray imaging system may, after a certain number of hours of operation, begin to output less X-ray energy due to a degradation in the X-ray tube. Such a degradation in the X-ray tube can show up as a degradation in X-ray image quality such as, for example, less penetration into the body. As a further example, a receiver bandwidth setting of an ultrasound imaging system may be inadvertently changed by an operator for a particular imaging mode, resulting in degraded spatial resolution of images. Image quality degradation may not be noticed immediately by an operator, especially if the degradation occurs gradually over time. Furthermore, once the image quality degradation is noticed, it can be time consuming and difficult to track down the source of the image quality degradation in order to bring image quality back up to a desired level.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with the subject matter of the present application as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.